Chapter 28
“How has it been since you told your roommates you were moving out?” Jas asked from Nina’s phone screen where it rested on the bathroom sink.
“Conditions have … worsened,” Nina acknowledged, closing one eye to examine whether her cat-eye could, in fact, kill a man. Not quite. Unless blunt force trauma was an option.
“That’s too bad,” Jas sighed. “I like Simone.”
“Simone is actually not the problem.” Nina had always been the ideal audience for Simone’s benevolent indifference, which was a quality that was appealing if you enjoyed the ups and downs of striving for hard-won approval and less so if you liked knowing you were unconditionally loved and cherished.
As a roommate, Simone had been clean and beautifully uninterested in Nina’s daily activities.
There was no telling whether the same would be true for the foursome soon to be shared with Nina by Dalil, Maud, and Ryoko.
Would they be so respectful of her migraines, her occasional need for quiet?
Not that Nina had migraines anymore. Even her bowels worked like clockwork.
The inefficiencies of a normal human body had simply faded away, like she’d outgrown them.
Her only problem now was her interior awareness of how many weeks remained until finals.
The collective thrall that was the ongoing hunt.
“Simone’s going abroad next semester, which means Adelaide and Mei are going to be assigned two new roommates.”
“Ah.” Jas, an empath, required no further explanation. “But at least they have each other, right?”
“Well, Mei has her boyfriend. And Adelaide isn’t very fond of change.”
“Deal with it, white girl,” said Jas succinctly.
“It’s not like I blame her,” said Nina, with Nina’s pre-law tendency to argue both sides in a way that was so consistently performative she no longer knew how to skip it as a step.
Fawn had already laughingly pointed it out as what she called a charming inefficiency; even post-initiation, it seemed some elements of humanity yet remained.
Quelle tragédie. “I am kind of leaving them in a lurch.”
“Not really. It’s campus housing, so they’ll just be assigned new roommates, right? It’s not like they have to rush to find a subletter.”
“True, but still.” There was a knock at the door and Nina set down her eyeliner with a sigh. “That’s Arya. I assume you want to stay on and say hi?”
“Fuck yes, asshole. I still can’t believe you’re actually going out with him.”
Nina picked up the phone, carrying her sister’s image to the apartment’s front door. “I told you, I just needed a date for invite.”
“Why are you pronouncing it like that? In-vite?”
“It’s just what it’s called. And like I said, I needed a date.” Nina swung the door open, waving in a slightly awkward manner as Arya finished typing a message into his phone. “Hey,” she said, thrusting her phone into his hand. “Talk to Jas while I find a tutorial on eyeliner.”
“Oh, let me do it,” said Arya, happily accepting the phone. “I do a little calligraphy on the side and my Etsy reviews are unparalleled. Hey, Jas.”
“Oh, hi, Arya!” Nina nearly let out a burst of laughter at the sound of Jas’s breathless imitation of surprise. “What are you doing with my whore of a sister?”
“Not defiling her, if that’s what you’re asking. Here,” he offered to Nina, “give me the pen.”
“It’s not a pen, Arya, and I’m not letting you near my eye.”
“It’s essentially a pen, Nina, and I have to fix you, you’re a mess.”
“I didn’t know you did calligraphy!” exclaimed Jas, her voice several octaves too high.
“Oh, only because I’m a starving academic,” replied Arya gamely. He beckoned again to Nina with one hand, offering her Jas with the other. “Here, take your sister while I make you presentable.”
“You’re going to stab me in the eye,” said Nina. “Again!”
“You’re going to have to get over that,” Arya informed her seriously. “I was, like, fifteen. And you stole my lightsaber. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that crime doesn’t pay?”
Nina handed over the eyeliner with a groan, realizing as she swapped for the phone that she hadn’t properly looked at Arya’s outfit.
“You look good,” Nina realized aloud, and Arya did a little spin. “Did you just have that lying around?”
The theme of the invite was Malibu Barbie, which Nina had mostly underperformed.
She was wearing a dress she’d bought cheaply online in a Tropicana spectrum of pinks and turquoise, paired with some sequin knee-high boots she’d borrowed from Tessa.
Arya, meanwhile, had managed to procure a pair of tiny coral shorts that ended well above his knees, which he’d paired with a frayed denim vest he’d left open.
It almost appeared as though he’d contoured his abs with self-tanner, though it was also possible they simply looked like that.
“First of all, I used to be young,” said Arya, maneuvering Nina into the dining room chair and gesturing for her to close one eye. “I have a vault of secrets. Secondly,” he said through a peering look of concentration, “I did have to borrow the vest.”
“Explain the shorts?”
“No,” said Arya. “Now stop moving. I never have this problem with place cards.”
“You’re going to stab me in the eye, aren’t you?”
“Hello, I wanna see Arya’s outfit,” said Jas, who’d been left forgotten in Nina’s hand. “Bitch, show me!”
Nina shifted to try and capture Arya’s entire appearance while Arya scolded her again, sounding unerotically like their auntie.
“I can’t see shit, Nina. You’re really letting me down here,” Jas bemoaned.
“Done,” Arya announced triumphantly, leaning back to survey his handiwork. “Now that’s the cat’s meow.”
“Don’t,” sighed Nina.
“Now can I see?” demanded Jas.
“Whoa, damn,” said Mei, appearing in the corridor on her way from her bedroom to the bathroom. She hadn’t put in her contacts and was terribly nearsighted, so the Coke-bottle lenses made her eyes appear especially magnified as she gaped at Arya from afar. “Are you some kind of underwear model?”
“Close! I am an underpaid TA,” said Arya, as Nina picked up her phone for Jas to see him.
“Arya, stop,” said Jas, after what Nina observed to be a hard moment’s pause. “You can’t go out like that. Your mother will kill you. Our mother will kill you. Everyone can see your—”
“Bye, Jas!” said Arya cheerfully, reaching forward to hang up Nina’s phone. “Now can we go, please? This is the sort of outfit that looks much better in company.”
“It looks pretty good from here,” said Mei, who had been joined by Simone, who was appreciatively clicking her retainer.
“Nina,” said Arya. “I am doing you this very cool favor. I am being a very cool guy. Can we leave?”
It took only a few more tries to get Nina out the door, once she had forced Arya to take pictures with both her roommates (much funnier to send to her mother than a picture of Arya with her, because it did not involve anyone asking if Nina “really considered that a dress”) and arranged to meet up with Dalil at the corner of campus closest to the row.
Dalil, who was usually reliable, had been delayed due to the less admirable time-management qualities of her latest situationship.
(The two could not date “for real,” said Dalil, because she could not in good conscience take seriously a person named Yarden.)
Outside it was rudely crisp, borderline frigid.
Nina hopped from foot to foot, desperately taking sips from a flask she passed to Arya as she texted Dalil with increasing urgency (??
??????) and looked up again at his outfit, trying not to laugh.
“I really can’t believe you did this for me,” she said, accepting the flask back from Arya after he’d taken a long, covert sip.
“It’s so … I mean, it’s impressive, really, this level of commitment. ”
“I am very fond of you,” said Arya, whose teeth were chattering as Nina raised the flask shakily to her lips, “though my benevolence does diminish by the second.”
Nina passed the flask back to him and hugged herself tightly, texting Dalil again purely for want of something to fixate on besides the cold. “Have you been to one of these before?” she asked Arya. “You know, sorority things?”
“Here and there,” Arya confirmed. The rate at which the vodka blanket was being passed from hand to hand was influenced by a mix of glacial temperature drop and awkwardness—they hadn’t spent this much time alone together without Jas or their parents since they were kids.
“I don’t own these shorts for my health. ”
“Certainly not your reproductive health, no.” Nina grinned, and Arya played theatrically at offense.
“I’ll have you know I’m wearing just as much short as you are skirt.”
“Well, as Jas would say, something-something gender roles—”
“You look good,” Arya said abruptly, as an apparent tangent, in something that struck Nina as an unusual tone of voice.
He was inspecting her closely, searching her face with something that made Nina sharply aware of her bare legs, her upstanding nipples.
“I mean … you look healthy, and happy, and … something.”
She groped his hand for the vodka, fingers stiff with cold. “You are a man of many very good words,” Nina offered drily, into the flask.
“I don’t know, you just seem different. You … glow.” Arya made a brief gesture in the general direction of her face. “I don’t mean it in a gross way.”
“I’m telling Jas you said my rack was huge.”
“Please,” said Arya, pained, “do not do that. Come on, I thought we had a kinship.”
“Really?” Nina said, unable to disguise her genuine surprise. “What have we ever had in common?”
“We,” Arya said, snatching the flask back from her, “are keen observers. We reflect more than we say.” He took a long pull from the flask and shuddered. “God, and I thought I’d matured. Oh well, when in Rome.”
“If we’re both apparently mirrors, what are we reflecting in each other right now?” Could Arya see it? Nina wondered. All these things that she had done.
“Extreme cold,” said Arya, so no. “And if I had to guess, a taste for distant authority figures.”
Nina didn’t hear him, having been tackled out of the blue.
“NINA,” screeched Dalil, barreling into Nina’s side from somewhere on her left. “I’M FUCKING FREEZING. And what’s eight hundred goblin emojis supposed to mean?” she demanded, showing Nina their messages on her screen.
“I don’t know, Dalil, let’s just get the hell out of here—”
There was a brief flurry of introduction as Yarden appeared, wearing a very similar outfit to Arya’s but without the impressive muscular tone that apparently came with achieving physical maturation.
His blond hair flopped over in something that was deeply, J.Crew-ily catalog.
Nina slipped the flask from Arya’s proffered fist into Dalil’s hand, both of them tripping over themselves with giggles as they made their way to the house to board the waiting buses.
“Everyone on the buses, let’s go!” shouted Alina, who was flanked on one side by her impassive-looking date—the boyfriend, Tripp, that Fawn had previously called a knockoff Kennedy—and on the other, recognizable with a hard lurch from Nina’s chest, Fawn.
Fawn had opted for evening-gown Barbie, wearing a tight satin dress that stretched across her hips.
She looked too refined, almost upsettingly so, compared to everyone—Nina included—who seemed now, unmistakably, to be a partially drunken clown.
Fawn stood out from the crowd, peerless, alone.
How had she chosen Nina; how could she while away her time with Nina when there were so many others more worthy—prettier, kinder, smarter, better tasting, probably?
Why was Fawn always alone when surely there were throngs of admirers, mobs of desirers, countless throbbing bodies pulsing amorously with want?
Nina had the sudden, distressing urge to shove Arya in front of her like a shield until she could regain some poise, sober up, change all her clothes.
Too late. Fawn spotted her, a brief, wolfish look coming over her face as her mouth twisted up in a smile.
“Little Sis!” Fawn said, holding out her arms for what Nina realized belatedly was Dalil, not her.
She held herself back half an inch, and then it was her turn, like a peasant in line for the queen, to bask in the gracious light of Fawn’s attention.
“Wow,” Fawn breathed in Nina’s ear. “Your date is fucking hot. Should I be jealous?”
“No” was all Nina could manage. She wanted to laugh, honestly. Arya was basically a sibling, or furniture. Arya could start a disco flash mob or flawlessly perform a sonnet or drop dead on the sidewalk and Nina would still be looking at Fawn. “Where’s your date?”
“Oh, I never bring one to these,” Fawn said with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Have to stay sober for liability stuff anyway, so—oh my god, Maud, I love that bodysuit!”
Nina felt herself being pulled by the tide onto the bus, shivering again as her moment in the sun passed away.
She glanced over her shoulder, catching Fawn’s wink, and let herself be directed to the fray, Fawn still the fulcrum of everything.
But the chorus of bawdy songs had already caught like wildfire, and Nina found herself in the thrall of the night before she even knew it had begun.